thegraverunnersguildfandomcom-20200216-history
Hunter: Little Bit
HUNTER YOUNG Hunter’s back hit the wall and she gave an oof, lighting her attacker on fire. That was the day her father finally threw her out of the house, yelling about how she was a demon child, how she’d killed her mother, tearing her up from the inside with those horns. Hunter screamed back at him. He slammed the door and went to pat her stepmother’s burns with aloe. They didn’t know where the demon blood had come from. Neither family would own up to it, but there Hunter was, like a fucking changeling, red as the sand and horned and tailed. It wasn’t like it was her fucking fault. Demon child, though, they called her, all of them. Hellion. She’d tried to learn some magic, so she could just … change it. So she wouldn’t have to be a demon, at least not look like one, not get treated as one. No dice, though. Dice, now. That she was good at. She spent some time cheating at it, sleeping in doorways ‘til she got the money for a room. Then the inn changed owners and her price went up, ‘cause the new one didn’t much care for her, and she couldn’t afford it anymore. She was fucking tired of this town. Next town over wasn’t much better. The next one was worse. It was a port town, though -- a little one -- and it got wiped off the fucking map entirely when Dread Jones showed up. Her pirate ship launched cannonballs through every fucking building, her archers landed flaming arrows on all the wooden walls. They wrought unholy destruction on every fucking person in that shithole who’s glared at Hunter and spat at her feet as she walked by, and she crouched by the sewer drain and watched with wide, awed eyed. They were all tieflings. Every last one of them. And there was Dread herself, leading the charge when they stormed the port, lashing with her scimitar and her tail, tricorn perched atop her ram’s horns, slamming her foot on the cobbles to turn nature itself against the town. She was amazing. She was deadly. Hunter couldn’t stop staring at her. It was a human, actually, who spotted her. An older woman with a cutlass and a heavy crossbow on her back, sharp eyes behind half-moon glasses. She came over amidst the wreckage and Hunter drew back, expecting -- ah, she wasn’t sure what. No human had ever treated her worth shit. This woman, though, this pirate, she offered down a hand. “You’re the wrong sort to be in a town around here, lass.” The old pirate brought her around to Dread Jones and asked what they ought do with her. Jones towered over them both, more in posture than stature, and looked Hunter over, and Hunter gaped at her. “You know how to sail, little bit?” Jones asked. “Naw.” “You wanna learn?” “Uh-huh.” Captain Jonesy smiled down at her and ruffled her hair, and that was that. Category:Vignettes